


Every Thought Captive

by lightspire



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Mind Reading, One-Shot, POV Female Character, PWP, Smut, Telepathy, cursing, telepathic connection, whouffaldi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-02
Updated: 2015-01-02
Packaged: 2018-03-04 23:42:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3096908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lightspire/pseuds/lightspire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clara was in trouble. Serious trouble. Every thought and memory in her head was streaming, unfiltered, through the mind-reading device strapped to her head, which in turn was linked into the TARDIS telepathic circuits and being displayed on the monitor screen. </p><p>"Oh god. I am so screwed," she thought. And she was.</p><p>Time: After Last Christmas</p>
            </blockquote>





	Every Thought Captive

Clara was in trouble. Serious trouble. Every thought and memory in her head was streaming, unfiltered, through the mind-reading device strapped to her head, which in turn was linked into the TARDIS telepathic circuits. A thousand images a second were spilling across the view-screen monitor and through a software filter that the Doctor had programmed into the TARDIS data core.

“It’s the only way to get rid of the telepathic virus in your brain,” he had told her gently, apologetically. “I’m so sorry. I promise not to look any more than is absolutely necessary. But yes, a copy of every thought in your head is being downloaded right now. I’ve created a filter to catch the mind-virus so the TARDIS medical unit can synthesize a drug to kill it. This shouldn’t take long, but it’s the only way, Clara. I really am sorry.” 

She’d been exposed to the alien virus on the planet Fruteximous Minor, the planet of sentient shrubs, when she had accidentally, stupidly, brushed against a telepathic thorn-bush. It had scratched her left hand badly, injecting her with the alien virus as it did so. She had become sick with a horrific headache almost instantly, and had fainted from the pain as the pathogen quickly made its way to her brain.

The last thing she remembered before she passed out was the Doctor shouting, “Clara!” a look of horrified alarm on his face.

The Doctor had carried her at a run back to the TARDIS, and when she came round she’d found herself resting in a comfortable chair facing the console, with a bizarre helmet strapped to her head. It bristled with wires and antennae and flashing lights, and a thick cable snaked from it up under the TARDIS controls, connecting it to the telepathic circuits.

She reached up to touch her throbbing head and squeezed her eyes shut against the pain, but the strange helmet was in the way.

“It hurts ...,” she said weakly.

A look of deep concern on his face, he’d fumbled in his pockets for a moment and produced a small syringe. He strode purposefully over to her and injected her arm with it, then rubbed the spot where the needle went in, soothing the skin. That’s when she noticed that he’d already cleaned and bandaged her injured hand. It didn’t even hurt – he must have put some sort of numbing salve on it while she was unconscious.

“Mild anesthetic,” he explained, tapping the syringe. “Should help dull that headache until we can get rid of the virus permanently.”

Her brain felt inflamed and her temples throbbed, but the pain had indeed diminished to a dull ache and she could see and think more clearly now.

“Every thought is on that screen, Doctor?” She swallowed hard at that, her mouth suddenly gone dry. “Even what I’m thinking right now?”

He looked at her sympathetically. “Yes, every thought. So. Um. You might want to…ah… censor those if necessary?” He turned back to the console and tapped at some keys as he watched images of her thoughts flicker across the screen.

 _Oh god. I am so screwed._ She tried to clamp down on the words before they had fully formed in her mind, but it was too late. That particular brainwave had made it to the screen before she could kill it.

The Doctor chuckled, “Oh Clara, I said I was sorry … try to hold on. Keep your mind blank, if you can.”

_Don’t think, he says. Then he goes and laughs … that rare and wondrous laugh of his that does things to me and he expects me not to think about that? As. If._

She closed her eyes and tried to clear her mind. She tried not to think. It was like that time at the bank of Karabraxos with the Teller. Or with those dream-crab things. She tried not to think about how the Doctor had saved her, or how he had come into the dream himself, and she tried very, very hard not to think about the way he looked at her and held her hands and cared for her and ….

 _Damn_. The anesthetic was making her mind fuzzy. She was fighting to keep a blank screen before her mind’s eye, but the soothing effects of the drug were causing her thoughts to wander. 

She tried to focus on a single thing – the cable running under the console. That was boring enough – maybe if she could just stay fixated on that her mind would behave. 

Just then the Doctor knelt down under the console to zap the cable with his sonic screwdriver, making tiny adjustments to the connections. He was squeezed in between her chair and the console now, his back practically touching her, and she couldn’t help but stare at him. She noticed the way his shoulder blades poked through the dark wool of his coat, and how the perfectly tailored fabric stretched against his back and arms so that every inch of his elegant toned form showed. Her eyes wandered down his back to where his jacket vent split and draped over the curve of his nicely rounded … 

_No, no, no. Don’t think that. Don’t think about his bum._

She snapped her eyes upwards to the back of his neck. A crisp white shirt collar peeked from the top of the jacket, encircling the tendons and muscles in his long neck, which tensed and stood out under his pale skin as he turned his head, working steadily on the cable.

 _I want to run my tongue down that neck from the hollow under his jaw down to that little dip right there where it meets his collarbone and nibble my way back up again_ …. _Oh for god’s sake, shut up, brain!_

She squeezed her eyes closed, took a deep breath, and tried again. This time her gaze wandered to his hair – that glorious curly hair that tumbled from the top and sides of his head, glinting in silver, layered waves in the light of the central column. A little tuft of darker hair curled from the back of his neck to the spot right behind his left ear, just touching the back of his earlobe, which showed a faint scar as though an earring had once pierced the tender flesh there.

_Do not think about biting that earlobe. Just don’t. Or about what it would feel like to run my fingers through that hair and tug on it and massage his scalp with my nails... help… stop stop stop. Thank god he’s not looking at the screen right now. Must… not…think…._

She looked at his profile instead. His aquiline nose, the laugh lines around his eyes, his strong, lightly stubbled jaw…. And that’s when her mind, numbed by the anesthetic and infected with an alien virus, completely betrayed her.

_Oh, sod it all. I give up._

The control freak lost it, then; her thoughts flowed freely, unfettered, and she couldn’t stop them. She was utterly embarrassed; her cheeks blushed bright red, and her fingers gripped the arms of the chair, her knuckles white, in a desperate metaphor of holding on to some semblance of control. But she was powerless to impede her thoughts, which were running away from her now at breakneck speed. Everything about him turned her on. She couldn’t help it. The Doctor was a walking, talking, living, breathing source of nearly constant sexual frustration for her, and it almost drove her mad sometimes. And now all that pent-up desire was flashing across a stupid screen for the entire world to see.

_Damn pudding brain. Might as well just tell him you want to throw him against the console and shag his brains out._

Clara was starting to feel a little sleepy now, too weakened by the disease and relaxed by the anesthetic to fight. She briefly wondered if the TARDIS swear filters were censoring her words and thoughts – she hoped for the sake of her dignity and their relationship that the filters were working, but she had no way of knowing.

 _Bloody hell_. _I never asked for this…. Stupid bloody thorn bush._

The Doctor stood up then, toggled some switches and tapped at the keyboard some more, staring intently at the view screen. He glanced towards Clara then, but made no indication that he’d seen what she was thinking just now. He began to move around the console, flipping levers and turning dials, occasionally looking in her direction.

_You wanna know what I’m thinking now, Doctor? Just now I’m thinking about the way you move. With your swagger and your ridiculous run and the way you talk with your hands and arms and how every gesture you make is bold and precisely controlled and absolutely mesmerizing. You sexy bastard._

She watched him as he worked his way around the central dais, his crimson-lined jacket flaring like a warning flash or sexual display: red, the color of engorged lips, flushed skin, of pulsing blood, of life. The color of heat, of fire, of flame – of arousal. The lining that, whenever he stuck both hands into his trouser pockets, framed his … _no don’t think it don’t think it_ … like a big red arrow pointing _right_ _there_.

_Stop it. Agh. Look at something else, anything else._

She tried to look away from him, but the helmet and chair made it difficult to face in any other direction but towards the console. So, with little choice in the matter, she watched him work. His fingers hovered above the flight controls, flicking levers and switches as he steered the TARDIS. She stared at his hands, captivated by the way his impossibly long, elegant fingers flew over the mechanisms, confident and sure of his power over -- the power he shared with -- the most formidable ship in the universe. 

 _Those hands are so talented … I wonder what else they can do?_ And she thought about what else they could do … and whimpered a little _._

 _Damn it_.

He moved in tandem with his machine as they danced across the vast interstellar distances, two unfathomably brilliant minds, psychically linked, traveling through all of space and time, together. She thought about the odd contradiction of how he radiated power and strength and intelligence no matter what he was doing, despite the gangling, sometimes awkward movements of his long and graceful limbs. From the most mundane act of fixing a gadget, to commanding an enemy to leave this plane and never come back, he could take control of a room – or an entire planet -- with just his voice, with a glance, a mere gesture. He’d faced demons and angels and gods … and won. Miraculously, he was still humble, still kind, and still found wonder and love in the universe. The mixture of that power and humility intoxicated her, drew her to him like an inescapable gravity well, an irresistible magnet … like a moth to a flame.

Clara saw – no, _felt_ … was it her connection with the telepathic circuits that let her feel this? -- his oneness with the crashing waves of time itself; his ability to know, to see, to move in unison with the ebb and flow of the universe.

_And it – all of it – all of him \-- was hot. Hot. As. Hell._

He caught her staring this time, and locked eyes with her briefly, before spinning away again and focusing intently on the knobs in front of him.

_His eyes. God, those eyes. Those gorgeous, indescribable, multi-colored, piercing blue eyes, framed by long, dark silky eyelashes – eyes that could see right through you and into your past and your future and penetrate right into your deepest soul._

She’d often tried to figure out what color they were, exactly, but they never stayed quite the same, depending on what he was wearing or even his mood. Sometimes they reminded her of a frozen blue lake or frost on conifers under a winter sky. Other times they flashed with a mixture of turquoise and green like the liquid sea after a storm. When he was angry, they turned to steel. And then there were those looks … the looks he saved just for her, alternately loving, concerned, happy, tearful, angry, commanding … and longing.

And the eyebrows that framed his beautiful eyes: those jagged, lush, expressive eyebrows that could silence enemies with a blistering glare and soak knickers with a single, blazing smoulder. God -- that man could send heat straight to her core with just a look.

The Doctor had made his way back to the screen by then and was studying it intently. He turned to look at her again, chin tilted down, his gaze boring into her.

And heat went straight to her core.

 _Fuck_.

She squeezed her legs together tightly and squirmed in the chair. But despite her growing arousal, she was increasingly drowsy now, and her eyelids fluttered shut.

“Clara…” he said, his voice the low breathy purr of a prowling jaguar, “Can you hear me?”

“Mhmmm…” she replied, and her lips curled into a slight smile.

“Clara, I need you to stay awake just a little bit longer. The TARDIS hasn’t caught the virus yet but I think she’s close. Can you do that for me? Stay awake?”

It was hard. So hard not to drift off to the sound of that luxurious voice – a voice as rumbly and soft as gravel grinding underfoot against hot cobblestones after a summer rain when the steam rises off them with a barely perceptible hiss. She could listen to him talk all day, about anything – it didn’t matter what. He could read the London telephone directory or the ingredients list off a crisp packet. Whatever.

She opened her eyes again.

“Talk to me … keep me awake?” she said.

“I’ll do my best.” He leaned over her, almost touching his chest to her own, and began adjusting the wires and dials on her helmet. He was so close she could smell him: that clean crackle of time energy mixed with a lingering scent of greenery from the shrub-planet they’d been on. He began to talk technical nonsense about what he was doing, babbling about wires and linkages and circuits in an attempt to keep her awake. Keep her alive just a little longer.

 _I can feel your voice, Doctor,_ she thought _. I can feel it vibrate inside me_. It was like the deepest notes of a basso violin, the black velvet of the darkest night and the echo of distant thunder all rolled into one, and her whole body tensed, resonating with the sound. She shuddered as the vibrations made by his words rippled through her.

 _Holy Hell_.

_I just want to listen to that voice, Doctor. I want to hear your voice catch in your throat as I kiss you and suck on your lips and caress your tongue with my own. I want to hear you growl and snarl like a wolf as I go down on you and then I want to make you scream my name as you come inside me with the force of a hurricane…. Oh god…._

Incredibly, her willpower rallied a little then, and she used the chance to bat the images away.

 _Focus, Clara_. 

She tried to concentrate on the nearest thing. Which happened to be the Doctor’s white shirt buttons, which were centimeters from her face. The fabric gapped a little between the buttons and she got a glimpse of the skin of his chest, dusted with a few white curly hairs. It reminded her of the times she’d seen him soaking wet, the thin material of his shirt clinging to his body, outlining every angle and line and curve. 

 _This isn’t helping._  

Almost involuntarily, Clara reached her hand up and rested it on the Doctor’s chest, and poked a finger through the gap between his buttons, caressing the skin there with her fingertip. He froze. She could feel his double pulse speed up under her hand. 

 _I want you_.

“Clara…” he placed his palm over her hand, and gently moved it back down to rest on the armrest. He took a step backwards, turned towards the view screen again … and blushed beet red.

Suddenly, a green warning light flashed and a loud beeping sound echoed through the console room.

“Got it! Yes!” The Doctor barked, and furiously tapped in some instructions to the TARDIS. He took off running down a corridor to the medical bay, then returned a few moments later with a vial and a syringe, which he quickly filled with the medicine, and injected her arm. He pulled out a second syringe from his pocket and injected her other arm.

“Whazzat?” She raised an eyebrow, questioning, her voice unsteady.

“Stimulant. Neutralizes the anesthetic,” he said. “You won’t need it now.”

Clara was still drifting off … she just wanted to sleep ….

“Oh no, no, no you don’t … stay with me Clara,” he pleaded, his voice urgent. “Just a few seconds longer … hold on.” He unstrapped the helmet from her head, removed it carefully, and set it on the floor.

As she closed her eyes and slipped into unconsciousness again, the last words she heard were the Doctor’s: “Clara! Clara wake up. Clara … Clara .…”

She was dreaming. It was the best dream ever. He was kissing her on the lips, his warm, soft mouth clamped around hers, his breath streaming into her, bringing oxygen into her lungs, and life back into her body.

But it wasn’t a dream and suddenly she was wide awake, coughing and spluttering and staring up into his eyes and he was backing away _don’t go, please don’t go, please oh please just do that again_ ….

His expression of intense worry changed to deep relief as he watched the color return to her cheeks and her eyes open. She was going to be all right, thank Rassilon, she was going to live.

“Do what again?” he asked.

Clara’s eyes grew wide, and she sat bolt upright in the chair. “Did I say that aloud?” She rubbed her head, a little dizzy now but the pain was completely gone.

“Yes. Well. Actually, you said … well … you _thought_ … um … quite a lot of things.” He looked at her then, and a small smirk played about his lips but his pupils were dilated and his skin was still flushed from giving her the kiss of life. “The TARDIS and I are telepathically linked. So ... yeah. I got the gist of …” he swirled a hand in the air, “It. Things.” 

Mortified, Clara blushed crimson, covered her eyes with her hands, and groaned softly. “How much … things?” she asked, lowering her hands and looking at him. 

“Enough,” he said, smiling at her. “I didn’t realize….” 

“Then you’re an idiot,” she said.

“Yes. I am that.” He nodded.

Clara looked at him silently for a moment, and thought, “ _In for a penny, in for a pound. What the hell_.”

“Well?” she asked. “What do you think?”

“I thought you’d never ask,” he said.

And suddenly he was kissing her, lightly at first then passionately, fiercely, and then her mind filled with a flood of images like the ones that had flickered across the TARDIS screen. But they were not her thoughts -- they were his. Of her. Of her soft brown hair and liquid brown eyes and delicate, warm, human skin and how she was so strong and brave and fearless and a damn good liar and brilliant and she would always look the same to him…Clara, his Clara…the Clara who had saved him, who was bonded to him across all of time and space. And oh god he wanted her … he wanted her as hotly and as desperately as she wanted him. Suddenly, she got a flash of a vision of her pinned up against the console, him thrusting powerfully into her, in a mirror image of her own fantasies ….

 _“I can assure you there are much more comfortable places for that than the console, as fun as that sounds_ …” his words filled her mind, and she realized that even his very thoughts had a satisfied smirk embedded in their tone -- the sassy bastard. “ _Language_ ,” he chided her.

“You want language? I’ll give you language, Doctor,” Clara said, her voice seductive. She grabbed him by the lapels and leaned forward, her lips hovering just next to his ear, her breath hot on his skin. The hairs stood up on the back of his neck as she proceeded to whisper all the filthy things into his ear that she’d been thinking, that she’d ever thought … everything she wanted to do to him, with him, and where. He growled and grabbed her by the waist and pulled her to her feet.

Hand in hand, they practically ran down the corridor to her bedroom.

 

****

The first time they made love it was frantic, rough, desperate, and feral. She screamed, he roared her name, and they collapsed, breathless and panting, into each other’s arms. The second and third times were slower, more languid, as they explored each other’s bodies and minds, likes and dislikes, savoring every moment.

Cradled in each other’s arms and basking in the afterglow, Clara asked, “Why did we wait so long?”

“Some things are worth waiting for, I guess,” he said, caressing her hair, a contented grin on his face. “Though I wish I’d taken you for a snog in the shrubbery sooner.”

 

 


End file.
